


paradise, not as a destination but as a place we never even saw

by Contra



Category: His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
Genre: Character Study, F/M, kind of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-13
Updated: 2019-11-13
Packaged: 2021-01-29 17:49:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 776
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21414184
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Contra/pseuds/Contra
Summary: it's not that they wanted the same things, exactly, but they did share the raw act of wanting. (Lord Asriel/Marisa Coulter)
Relationships: Lord Asriel/Marisa Coulter
Comments: 5
Kudos: 43





	paradise, not as a destination but as a place we never even saw

**Author's Note:**

> Kinda inspired by [Daniel Kahn's cover of Leonard Cohen's Story of Isaac](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MOS3iEiXwIc)
> 
> if it all comes down to dust  
i will kill you if i must  
i will help you if i can
> 
> Listen, I'm OBSESSED with these two

there is a kind of hunger that is drawn relentlessly only to hunger that matches itself.

this is how they meet. she's all grace and poised laughter and blood red silk and he's something that's different but not quite the opposite. they're both experimental theologians, which in their silent mutual understanding equates to curious, shameless heretics.

_knowledge is power_, he says, it's the kind of thing all the oxford boys say at dinner parties in a desperate attempt to make themselves interesting, but he has a certain cutting steel in his blue eyes that she will later recognize as god-killing.

_well_, she laughs - it's a honey-trap sound, it's a venomous dart that he once studied in the jungles of bolivia - _then what do you know? _

and it's a sincere question, because she knows a thing about power or two, and it's always, always ravenous.

he tells her about rusakov particles and northern lights and then later when he's slightly drunk on wine and the intoxicating warmth of her presence, he whispers dirty, reckless wonders into warm skin stretched over the beat of her heart.

she knows more than him about all of these arts.

but she's young and married to an old man and he's different, he's _different_. not that she believes in that kind of thing.

  
_what is his name_, he'll ask even later, when her perfume still clings to his skin like a part of her body is left now only wanting to, while his fingers readjust his silk tie. their daemons are still touching, as if neither of them would notice it.

_he doesn't have a name_, she anwers, which is only two-thirds of a lie, almost a truth by her standards. 

_all daemons have names_, he counters. but he doesn't sound like he's sure.

  
if he was as smart as he thought he was, he would have run by now instead of falling desperately in love with a woman who cannot even name her own soul, but he's not, he's something bitterly, voraciously else.

curiosity is only one facet of it. so is desire.

what binds them together, until the end but also long before that, is their shared plurality of hungers - a greed for things nameless and far outside of their reach.

  
he blows up heaven one tuesday and none of the stars will he want to touch as urgently as the ones in her eyes. she'll lie to the angels and make them believe it.  
but truth has never been much of a currency between them, despite their agonizing, relentless pursuit.

  
they kiss, they fuck, they explore and they kill and in the end, they'll die together. out of all the things they wanted, that was the one they - gently, only in the privacy of their own silence - will admit they wanted the least.

  
_but i wanted_, she'll whisper, in the no-man's land between this world and the next that has almost become home to them, or will become home to them, now that it's over. death is just another abyss they could never completely resist. _i wanted something better than this._

_i wanted to kill god for you,_ he'll answer, or maybe won't have to, or_ i wanted to kill him for myself_ and isn't it telling how those lines are blurring.

it's not an _i love you_ but it's as close as they come.

  
they're not that far yet though, they're still at a dinner party and breathing and alive, two deeply egoistical people capable of loving only themselves but then unable to maintain their own borderlines until they are so closely joined that new life springs from the point of convergence.  
this life is beautiful, they'll think and sometimes, in their hopeful moments - she's absolutely nothing like us.

they don't have any delusions left. certainly not by the time they die, but also long before that. it takes broken people to try and build up a kingdom of heaven - everyone else is too comfortable at home.  
_is that what you were trying to achieve with the incisions?_ he'll ask and it's scientific interest rather than moral accusation.   
she'll look at him with eyes that are like entire universes - he never had any scruples about tearing open the sky - and she'll chuckle in that cynical sweet way of hers and say, _how romantic, my dear, i think we killed children for the very same reasons._

  
nobody ever said they were good. 

_we might have been better_, he'll whisper. this is when they're falling again, after everything is already over, with no choices left to make.   
_no_ \- and this is how she dies - _we did our rotten damaged best_.


End file.
